The two Senate campaigns in Minnesota -- if they can be called campaigns almost five months after the election -- may very well have struck gold all over again, thanks to a new FEC advisory opinion from yesterday.

The opinion will allow donors who want to help Franken and Coleman to donate up to $30,400 to special recount funds -- even if they'd already maxed out to the regular party committees or to Franken and Coleman's regular campaign funds.

So if Norm Coleman or Al Franken suddenly needed a half-million dollars, for example, all it would take is less than 20 super-wealthy individuals, willing to max out for the cause -- not too shabby.

Professor David Schultz of Hamline University explained to TPM that this can allow Coleman to take in amounts of money he simply couldn't get before. "If the ruling had gone the other way he would have had to go out and find a bunch of new donors," Schultz explained. "With this ruling, he at least the opportunity to go back and tap his previous donors."

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney just released a statement responding to Sen. Arlen Specter's (R-PA) announcement that he would oppose the labor-backed Employee Free Choice Act -- and the labor chief isn't backing down from the "death blow" framing that's already being applied to today's news.

In fact, Sweeney's remarks are all the more cutting because of their high-minded commitment to keep amassing support for the Employee Free Choice measure, which is labor's No. 1 priority for the year and would broadly ease union-organizing rules. No matter how you look at it, Specter can forget about getting the state AFL-CIO's endorsement for the second straight election cycle.

The House's official budget resolution will be posted on its Budget Committee website at 10:30am tomorrow, but its crucial details are already known on the Hill.

As I mentioned earlier, the filibuster shield known as "reconciliation" will be invoked by the House on a time-dependent basis for health care reform, but not used in the Senate. The House budget is also set to "save money" by not permanently indexing the alternative minimum tax (AMT) to inflation -- and I put that phrase in quotes because Congress inevitably adjusts the AMT every year, but never attempts a permanent AMT fix for fear of acknowledging its huge impact on the deficit.

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) is continuing to attack his fellow Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate GOP leader, along with NRSC chairman John Cornyn for seemingly trying to force him out of office -- and he's not too fond of the media coverage, either.

Bunning pointed out that Mitch McConnell is already raising money for his 2014 re-election campaign, crowding out dollars that could have gone to Bunning in 2010 -- compared to Bunning's own act of standing down in the money race during McConnell's 2008 campaign: "Just as I refrained from doing it for two years, he sent out his, so you know where he stands."

And there's also the way that McConnell and Cornyn have met with state Senate President David Williams about a possible primary challenge: "When they recruit someone to run against you in a primary, it puts doubt in people's minds that you are going to finish the race. Therefore, they're waiting and waiting and waiting. It's almost a self fulfilling prophecy."

And Bunning also took serious issue with a recent story in the Louisville Courier-Journal, which reported that he was threatening to resign and give his state's Democratic governor the power to appoint his replacement.

Elijah Cummings has driven a lot of news about the AIG bonus scandal, but he's got tentacles deep in other controversial aspects of the $180 billion bailout. He's currently circulating (and I have obtained) a letter to colleagues, seeking their support for a TARP inspector general investigation into every aspect of the payments AIG made, with government money, to counterparties whose risky investments it had insured.

Goldman Sachs claimed in September that they had no material exposure to AIG; however, after AIG released the counterparty information on March 15, we found out that Goldman Sachs received almost $13 billion in counterparty payments.
The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Assets Relief Program was created to ensure that transparency and accountability stay firmly rooted in the government's efforts to revive and sustain the American economy. This letter proposes that the Special Inspector General examine the nature of the counterparty payments - including the recipients, the process by which they were made whole, and the justification, if any, for that level of payment.

He's asking members of Congress to cosign a letter to the inspector general asking him to conduct a thorough inquiry. We've been all over the counterparties controversy and we'll follow this campaign as far as it goes.

While much of D.C. focuses on today's testimony by the Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve chairman, Congress is diving into a fierce battle over the budget -- and we know where both the House and Senate officially stand.

The House is adding "reconciliation" language that would shield health care reform from filibusters, but only if the two parties can't reach a deal under normal terms by August. The Senate's budget outline, by contrast, has no filibuster protection.

But why would the House add reconciliation to its budget when the tactic is largely relevant only to Senate procedure? Sen. Judd Gregg (NH), the Budget Committee's senior GOPer, theorized today that Democrats are playing "Hide the Reconciliation Ball." Here's how.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) just dealt a big blow to the labor movement by announcing publicly that he would support a GOP filibuster of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), unions' No. 1 priority for this year and a subject of intense lobbying on both sides of the aisle.

"My vote on this bill is very difficult for many reasons," Specter said in a Senate floor speech, minutes after the news was broken by the Washington Independent. "It is very hard to disappoint many friends ... who are urging me to vote their way."

The Transportation Security Administration has cleared Senator David Vitter (R-LA) of wrongdoing in his reported airport rage incident.

To be exact, it was determined that Vitter did not pose a security threat. He did open the door to his plane's gate, which he should not have done after it had been shut, but he didn't go further after the alarm went off.

The TSA's statement: "TSA worked with local partners to review the incident and determined the actions of the individual did not pose a security threat. The individual caused a door to alarm but did not proceed into a restricted area."

Check out the new attack ads from Jim Tedisco, the Republican candidate in next Tuesday's special election for Kirsten Gillibrand's old House seat. The first one belongs to that very novel category of attack, practiced by all sides in politics -- the kind that blasts his Democratic opponent Scott Murphy for running attack ads:

Some things should be noted about the citations here, such as the Albany Times Unionsaying a Murphy ad was "unfair." To be exact, the ad was from the DCCC, though the Murphy campaign itself did stand by it. On the other hand, the same newspaper recently eviscerated an ad from Tedisco, as its staff has gone about policing the claims on both sides.

Centrist GOP Sen. Olympia Snowe (ME), whose support the White House is counting on to pass health reform, the budget, and climate change, offered a warning to President Obama today: Clarify your position on taxing bonuses at bailed-out companies, or risk losing more political capital.

"I think the president has an obligation to address this [and to] explain why he doesn't think this is necessary," Snowe told reporters today, referring to Obama's initial embrace of taxing bonuses -- which was followed days later by a pullback from his advisers amid questions about the measure's constitutionality.